R.I.P. for regulatory reform?

With California’s unemployment among the highest in the nation for more than three years, state leaders have repeatedly offered “I feel your pain”-style speeches to jobless residents.

Last year, they started to be more substantive. Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate President Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, each denounced the perils of excessive regulation. Brown called for major changes in the California Environmental Quality Act. The state’s landmark environmental law has become an all-purpose tool for anyone with an agenda to block construction, business expansion and much more. Even completely groundless CEQA litigation can tie projects up for years.

But last week, the governor abruptly announced that CEQA reform was off the table for 2013. Steinberg says Brown is wrong to give up. Sacramento insiders say he didn’t want a fight he couldn’t win – and that most legislative Democrats are siding with the green groups and the unions who like the CEQA status quo, having used the law so effectively over the years to impede business interests and to legally extort payoffs.

This is appalling. Here’s the message from state Democratic lawmakers, green crusaders and union members to the 3 million Californians who are unemployed, can only find part-time work or who have given up looking: Tough luck for you – but at least we’re employed.